Advisors

The Openfund Board of Advisors is constantly under expansion. If you are interested in becoming a member, you may contact us.

Research & Development Back to top

  • Nicolas Ampazis

    Nicolas Ampazis

    Assistant Professor

    Nicolas Ampazis

    Assistant Professor at the University of the Aegean, Entrepreneur - Chios, Greece
    Nicolas Ampazis

    Nicholas Ampazis received a BSc (Hons) degree in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London in 1992, an MSc degree (with distinction) in Information Processing and Neural Networks from King's College London in 1995, and a PhD degree (with distinction) in Neural Computing from the National Technical University of Athens in 2001. During his PhD studies he received a scholarship from the National Center for Scientific Research "Demokritos", Athens, Greece. Since 2005 he is an assistant professor at the Department of Financial and Management Engineering at the University of the Aegean, Greece and received tenure for this position as a faculty member in 2009. His main research interests include collective intelligence, information retrieval, data mining, and recommender systems. In 2006 he launched one of the first Web 2.0 startups in Greece (Feeds 2.0) for which he received a Global Innovator Award from Guidewire Group and the first prize for best business plan at the 8th International Venture Capital Forum (2007).

  • Nikos Anerousis

    Nikos Anerousis

    Head of Engineering, IBM

    Nikos Anerousis

    Head of Service Engineering Research, IBM - New York City, NY, US
    Nikos Anerousis

    Nikos Anerousis is currently head of Service Engineering Research at the IBM Corporation. Prior to joining IBM in 2003, he was the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Voicemate, a venture-backed startup company that pioneered voice authoring and publishing technology for the financial markets. He started his professional career at AT&T Bell Laboratories (subsequently AT&T Research) as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff. He has also served as adjunct faculty at the department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. Nikos has published extensively in the area of networks and systems management and has filed or was awarded over 20 patents. Dr. Anerousis is active in technology startups as an early investor and adviser on issues of strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation. Also, Dr. Anerousis graduated with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, where he also earned an M.Phil and a M.S. He completed his undergraduate studies at the National Technical University of Athens, receiving the Diploma in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

  • Andreas Constantinou

    Andreas Constantinou

    Director, Vision Mobile

    Andreas Constantinou

    Research Director, Vision Mobile - London, UK
    Andreas Constantinou

    Dr. Andreas Constantinou is Research Director at VisionMobile, a prominent industry analyst firm in telecoms. Andreas has nine years experience in research, development and strategy in wireless, specialising in mobile handsets, software strategy and open source. While at VisionMobile, Andreas has worked with several brand-name clients including Sony Ericsson, RIM, France Telecom, T-Mobile, Qualcomm and Symbian. His interests include uncovering under-the-radar industry trends and pursuing human-centric design. When not hopping on planes, Andreas spends his time in Athens, Greece. Andreas holds a Ph.D. in Video Compression from the University of Bristol, UK. You can follow Andreas on twitter.com/andreascon.

  • Ioannis Emiris

    Ioannis Emiris

    Professor, University of Athens

    Ioannis Emiris

    Professor, Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens - Athens, Greece
    Ioannis Emiris

    Ioannis Emiris is Professor of Geometric and Algebraic Algorithms in the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications at the University of Athens. He has been a Tenured Researcher with the French National Research Institute in Computer Science and Control. He holds a PhD and MSc from U.C. Berkeley, and a BSc from Princeton University, all in Computer Science. His research activities lie primarily in the areas of Scientific Computing, Computer-Aided Geometric Design, Robotics, and Bioinformatics.

  • Panos Ipeirotis

    Panos Ipeirotis

    Assistant Professor, Stern School NYU

    Panos Ipeirotis

    Assistant Professor, Stern School of Business NYU - New York City, NY, US
    Panos Ipeirotis

    Panos Ipeirotis is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information, Operations, and Management Sciences at Leonard N. Stern School of Business of New York University. His area of expertise is databases and information retrieval, with an emphasis on management of textual data. His research interests include web searching, economic-aware text and web mining, data cleaning, and data integration. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Columbia University in 2004 and a B.Sc. degree from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department (CEID) of the University of Patras, Greece in 1999. He has received two Microsoft Live Labs Awards, two "Best Paper" awards (IEEE ICDE 2005, ACM SIGMOD 2006), two "Best Paper Runner Up" awards (JCDL 2002, ACM KDD 2008), and is also a recipient of a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation.

  • Yorgos Panzaris

    Yorgos Panzaris

    Researcher, Entrepreneur

    Yorgos Panzaris

    Researcher, Entrepreneur - Athens, Greece
    Yorgos Panzaris

    Yorgos Panzaris has received a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and a PhD in the History of recent technology from Stanford University. He has researched and lectured on the history of networked computing and the emergence of Silicon Valley as an ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship. He has worked as a policy advisor at the Greek Ministry of Development and a research associate at the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. Yorgos is also the co-creator of AthensBook, a popular city guide for smartphones; and Geo|Ads, one of the first geo-aware advertising platforms for the iPhone.

  • Vasilis Vassalos

    Vasilis Vassalos

    Associate Professor AUEB

    Vasilis Vassalos

    Associate Professor, Athens University of Business and Economics
    Vasilis Vassalos

    Vasilis Vassalos is an Associate Professor in the Department of Informatics at the Athens University of Economics and Business. Between 1999 and 2003 he was an Assistant Professor of Information Technology at the NYU Stern School of Business. He has been working on the challenges of online processing of data from autonomous sources since 1996. He has published more than 35 research papers in international conferences and journals, holds 2 US patents for work on information integration, and regularly serves on the program committees of the major conferences in databases. He was a co-founder and CTO of Enosys Software, a pioneering data integration company that raised more than $10 million in VC funding and was acquired by BEA Systems (now Oracle Corp). He has led a number of publicly-funded research projects in the areas of online distributed information processing. Ηe was a Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellow in 2007-2008 visiting UCSD.

  • Dimitris Achlioptas

    Dimitris Achlioptas

    Professor, University of Athens

    Dimitris Achlioptas

    Professor, University of Athens - Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, Greece
    Dimitris Achlioptas

    Dimitris joined the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications at the University of Athens as a Professor of Algorithm Design in 2010. From 1998 to 2005 he was with Microsoft Research, Redmond and since 2005 with the Department of Computer Science UC Santa Cruz. In theory, his expertise lies in the interaction between randomness and computation and his work on that topic has appeared in journals including Nature, Science, and the Annals of Mathematics. For this work he has received an NSF CAREER award, a Sloan Fellowship, and the prestigious IDEAS grant from the European Research Council. In practice, he likes to think about scalability questions and holds 18 US Patents ranging from load balancing and cache optimization to privacy-preserving social search. He actively consults with a number of Bay Area companies. In his free time enjoys overworking.

Technology Back to top

  • Christos Kalantzis

    Christos Kalantzis

    Data Architect, YouSendit

    Christos Kalantzis

    Data Architect at YouSendit.com, US
    Christos Kalantzis

    Christos Kalantzis received a B.COMM in Management of Information Systems from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and completed his business graduate studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He has used his business and technical knowledge to help start-ups, in both Montreal and Silicon Valley, by being able to bridge the gap between those two realms. He is currently the Data Architect for YousenIt.com, a late-stage startup in Silicon Valley, solving their massive data storage issues, and engineering data designs to allow them to scale infinitely in the future. Christos is a founding member of shivacode.com, a blog created to share enterprise software design principles and experiences from a few Bay Area engineers, who have been around the block a few times

  • Dimitris Andreadis

    Dimitris Andreadis

    Manager, JBoss

    Dimitris Andreadis

    Software Engineering Manager, JBoss Application Server, Red Hat - Athens, Greece
    Dimitris Andreadis

    Dimitris Andreadis is the Manager of the JBoss Application Server group in the JBoss Division of Red Hat. He has been a JBoss addict and contributor from the early JBoss days and joined Boss in 2004. He became the Lead of the JBoss AS project for three years since 2006. Previously he spent seven years at Intracom and Motorola in the areas of NMS/OSS, designing reusable frameworks and distributed systems. Dimitris studied computer science at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens and received an M.Sc. by research from University College Dublin, Ireland.

  • Charis Ermopoulos

    Charis Ermopoulos

    Engineer, Google

    Charis Ermopoulos

    Software Engineer, Google File System, Google - Mountain View, CA, US
    Charis Ermopoulos

    Charis Ermopoulos is currently a senior software engineer at Google, working on GFS (the Google file system). In the past, he worked at NCSA and Motorola Research Labs on data mining and security related projects. He holds an MsC in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was pursuing a Ph.D. His interests include distributed systems and data mining.

  • Dimitris Glezos

    Dimitris Glezos

    Founder, Indifex

    Dimitris Glezos

    founder, Indifex - Patras, Greece
    Dimitris Glezos

    Dimitris Glezos is the founder and product director of Indifex, which develops open-source, community-powered products for content localization and distribution. He holds a seat on the Fedora Board (the popular Linux distribution with an audience of 10M) and serves as its Translation Leader. He also holds a position on the Board of the Greek Entrepreneurs' NGO hub, OpenCoffee. His start-up interests revolve around community building, open culture and open source software.

  • Dimosthenis Kaponis

    Dimosthenis Kaponis

    Software Engineer, Cosmical

    Dimosthenis Kaponis

    Software Engineer, Entrepreneur, Cosmical Technology - Athens, Greece
    Dimosthenis Kaponis

    Dimosthenis Kaponis is the founder and managing director of Cosmical Technology Ltd. and a Ph.D candidate at Imperial College London where he also got his M.Eng in Information Systems Engineering. At Imperial, he worked as a Research Associate in the Intelligent Systems and Networks group, during which time he worked on two European IST research projects, architecting an electronic contract-based trust mechanism in workflow management systems. Prior to founding Cosmical Technology in 2005, he worked as a consultant and contractor for a number of companies in the United Kingdom and Greece, specialising on software architecture, software engineering, distributed systems, security and algorithms.

  • Patrick Malone

    Patrick Malone

    CTO Microsoft Hellas

    Patrick Malone

    CTO Microsoft Hellas - Athens, Greece
    Patrick Malone

    Patrick Malone was born in Athens, and holds a BSc degree in Software Engineering from the University of Birmingham, and an MBA from the Athens Laboratory of Business Administration (ALBA). He has been working in Microsoft since 2005, initially as a Senior Developer Evangelist, starting 2006 as Architect Evangelist and since January 2008 as a Technology Director. The technology department is responsible for the company's relationship towards the software developers in the community, promoting the software platform, and also adaptation of the company's newer technologies in the market. Before Microsoft, ο Patrick was for 3 years an independent technology consultant in various organizations, while earlier he was the Technical Director of Broker Systems, a pioneering company that produced software for stock market agents. Patrick is married and has a 4 year old daughter and a son that just arrived, that make sure he has no free time at all – but the time he spends with them make the best parts of his day!

  • George Moschovitis

    George Moschovitis

    Serial web entrepreneur

    George Moschovitis

    Serial web entrepreneur - Athens, Greece
    George Moschovitis

    George Moschovitisis the entrepreneur behind well known Greek Web properties (www.me.gr, www.joy.gr, www.cull.gr, etc) and the lead engineer behind popular Open Source projects (Nitro, Og, etc). George worked as a technical consultant on high-profile commercial and research projects in Greece and the European Union and conducted extensive research on advanced computer graphics and signal processing algorithms as a Ph.D. candidate at the National Technical University of Athens. He received his diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the same university. Currently, he serves as the CTO of n-Squared Labs SA, a VC-backed startup.

  • John Nousis

    John Nousis

    Serial Web Entrepreneur

    John Nousis

    Serial Web Entrepreneur - Athens, Greece
    John Nousis

    John Nousis is yet trying to finish his degree in the Physics Department of the University of Athens. However, he proved to be disproportionally active in the entrepreneurial world. Just after finishing high-school, back in 1997, John co-founded his first start-up with Stefanos Vasdekis in the web hosting field. After a successful exit two years later, he moved on to co-found a number of internet companies (always together with his true soulmate, Stefanos Vasdekis) in the fields of ecommerce, web publishing, software development, internet consulting, online travel reservations and social networking. His favourite and most successful venture up to now is an ecommerce store that was selling software to US customers. Today, he spends his time on his ongoing projects and on new ones serving selected international markets.

  • Yiannis Mavraganis

    Yiannis Mavraganis

    Senior Software Developer, Eurobank

    Yiannis Mavraganis

    Software Engineer, Eurobank, GR
    Yiannis Mavraganis

    Yiannis received his diploma in Electrοnics and Computer Engineering from Technical University of Crete. During his post graduate studies, he was occupied as Technical Project Manager for European IST research projects mainly in the area of video on demand services. He worked for several years as senior software engineer and development manager in banking, telecom and online gaming sectors where he designed and developed web based mission critical systems (customer relationship management, rules based decision systems, online payment services, mobile games). Yiannis believes strongly in the effectivenesss of agile project management methodologies and he is a Certified Scrum Master.

  • Panayotis Vryonis

    Panayotis Vryonis

    Social media consultant

    Panayotis Vryonis

    Social media consultant - Athens, Greece
    Panayotis Vryonis

    Panayotis Vryonis studied Mathematics at the National and Kapodistrian University Of Athens. He decided not to get his degree and instead work as a software developer for small and larger projects. In 1999 he co-founded and held the position of CTO at e-Go Travel Ltd, a company providing on-line travel services for Greek destinations. In 2001 he joined the leading Greek interactive marketing agency, yellownetroad and after the merger of the two companies, became Chief Developer of OgilvyOne Worldwide Athens. An active advocate of Open Source Software, he was one of the founding members of the Hellenic Linux Users Group in 1998 and served multiple times on the Group's board. He is one of the first Greek bloggers and the first greek podcaster. His greek blog aggregator, called "monitor", played a key role in the early stages of the Greek blogosphere (2005). Since early 2007, Panayotis Vryonis works as a social media consulting for PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement).

  • George Papadakis

    George Papadakis

    Co founder Phaistos Networks

    George Papadakis

    Co founder Phaistos Networks
    George Papadakis

    George is the Head Of Operations at Phaistos Networks since 1997. Having supervised the implementation of a plethora of web services (Pathfinder.gr, Adman.gr, Trinity.gr among others), he is knowledgeable enough in terms of how to incorporate up-to-date techniques while creating usable and accessible web applications.

  • Nikos Kryvossidis

    Nikos Kryvossidis

    Director, Partnership Services, EMEA, Google

    Nikos Kryvossidis

    Director, Partnership Services, EMEA, Google
    Nikos Kryvossidis

    Nikos joined Google in 2007. At present he is responsible for the technical side of direct Google partnerships in EMEA for various Google product areas including Mobile. Prior to Google Nikos was Engineering SVP for Visto, an American company specialising in Mobile Email and Personal Information Management (PIM) synchronisation. Has also served in Symbian where he was responsible for Messaging, PIM, SyncML, Browsing and Location Based Services. Earlier on worked for Lucent Technologies in the area of ISUP and ISDN Services. Has also worked as a software engineer on Intelligent Network Services (Nortel) when AIN 0.1 and CS1 were being developed. Nikos holds an MSc in Computer Science from McGill University, Montreal and a BSc in Mathematics from University of Patras, Greece.

Business Development Back to top

  • Sotiris Sirmakezis

    Sotiris Sirmakezis

    Deputy GM, Retail Banking - Piraeus Bank

    Sotiris Sirmakezis

    Deputy GM, Retail Banking - Piraeus Bank, Athens, Greece
    Sotiris Sirmakezis

    Sotiris Sirmakezis is Deputy General Manager in the Retail Banking Sector of Piraeus Bank Group. He is responsible for the development, promotion and customer support for all alternative channels (ATM, web, phone, mobile phone, cash payment terminals etc.), interactive marketing (online sales, public web sites, SEO & SEM, social media etc.), electronic banking services (debit cards, card-not-present acceptance, direct debits etc.), value-adding services and e-business initiatives (prepaid cards, alerts, multi-channel air-time top-up, cardless withdrawals, payments portal, e-invoicing etc.) and customer experience management (customer satisfaction measurement, CRM utilization etc.). At the same time, he is the Managing Director of Piraeus Direct Services SA, an affiliate of Piraeus Bank that specializes in contact center services. He started in Piraeus Bank in January 2000 as Director of the Electronic Banking Division (winbank) and, before that, he was the CIO of the former Egnatia Bank (now, Marfin Egnatia Bank).

  • Tasso Argyros

    Tasso Argyros

    CTO, Aster Data

    Tasso Argyros

    co-founder > CTO, Aster Data Systems - San Francisco, CA, US
    Tasso Argyros

    Tasso (Tassos) Argyros is the CTO and co-founder of Aster Data Systems, where he is responsible for all product and engineering operations of the company. Tasso was recently recognized as one of BusinessWeek's Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs for 2009 and was an SAP fellow at the Stanford Computer Science department. While at Stanford, Tasso was pursuing a Ph.D. in the Distributed Systems Group with a focus on designing cluster architectures for fast, parallel data processing using large farms of commodity servers. He holds an MsC in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Diploma in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Technical University of Athens.

  • George Gatos

    George Gatos

    Thermi Ventures

    George Gatos

    Thermi Ventures - Thessaloniki, Greece
    George Gatos

    George Gatos, MSc, studied financing and specialized in entrepreneurship in the UK and the US. He began his career in the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation of the University of Florida and later as worked as a business consultant with a primary focus on strategy and fund raising for innovative companies. Today he works as an Investment Analyst at THERMI VENTURES, actively participates in groups fostering entrepreneurship and innovation and co-hosts the Open Coffee Thessaloniki meetings.

  • Alec Karys

    Alec Karys

    CTO, mShopper

    Alec Karys

    CTO, mShopper - Boston, MA, US
    Alec Karys

    Alec Karys is currently the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of mShopper, a company which provides real time price comparison, shopping and ad services over mobile devices, and he is also a Mentor at TechStars in Cambridge, MA. Alec has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, technical team manager and consultant at Amazon.com and various other technology and services companies. He was also co-founder and served as the CEO of Synapse Ventures Group, a virtual incubator, which provided start-up services to early stage technology companies, and Cognate Technologies, an E-Learning company based on patent pending technology from MIT research. Alec received his MBA and Electrical Engineering degrees from Northeastern University and attended the Engineering Executive Program at Stanford University. Alec has two issued patents in medical protocol authoring and delivery, and he has four patents in process in the area of mobile commerce.

  • Petros Katsampouris

    Petros Katsampouris

    CEO, Vivechrom

    Petros Katsampouris

    CEO, Vivechrom - Athens, Greece
    Petros Katsampouris

    Petros Katsampouris is the Managing Director of Vivechrom S.A., the Greek subsidiary of AKZONOBEL. Prior to this position he served as Deputy General Manager in ELGEKA, Business Unit Manager in KRAFT/Jacobs-Suchart, Sales Director in Pepsico-Tasty and Marketing Manager in Nestle. He is presently President of the Panhellenic Union of Paint Varnishes and Printing Ink Industry of Greece, and member of the General Council of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises.

  • John Lovitt

    John Lovitt

    former SVP, Rational/IBM

    John Lovitt

    former SVP Rational/IBM, Investor - Mountain View, CA, US
    John Lovitt

    John Lovitt has over 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, and general management in the software development and deployment markets. He was a senior officer in Rational Software from 1990 to 2003, with roles including Senior VP Worldwide Field Operations, VP Americas Field Operation, and VP Worldwide Services and Support. He played a key role in shaping Rational's team-oriented approach to achieving customer results through improved software development capability. John joined Rational in 1986 as the first products were going to market and grew sales to over $700 million annually, building a field organization of over 1800 sales and technical professionals while integrating several key acquisitions. Before joining Rational, John was with Hewlett Packard for 13 years and McDonnell Douglas for five years. John holds an M.S. in computer science from the Missouri University of Science and Technology at Rolla, and a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Wichita State University. He is also active on advisory boards at WSU and UMR, and is past president of the MS&T Academy of Computer Science, in addition to serving on several corporate boards. He is active in Habitat for Humanity and has taught entrepreneurship at international summer camps in Eastern Europe and China.

  • Aggelos Maglis

    Aggelos Maglis

    CEO, Atlantis

    Aggelos Maglis

    CEO, Atlantis Consulting - Thessaloniki, Greece
    Aggelos Maglis

    Aggelos Maglis is the CEO and President of Atlantis Consulting group, and also a board member of Wadja Ltd. He holds a Civil Engineer diploma and postgraduate studies in Technological evolution and Industrial Strategy from the University of Manchester (Prest) UK. He is a member of the Evaluation Network of the General Secretariat of Research of the EU Commission, while he also represents Atlantis towards EU bodies such as the ETEPS (European Techno- Economic Policy Support Network) and the TII (Technology, Innovation, Information).

  • David Taylor

    David Taylor

    Management consultant

    David Taylor

    Management consultant, Greece
    David Taylor

    David Taylor is a management consultant, currently working independently in Greece assisting firms in raising capital and improving operations. Previously he was an engagement manager at McKinsey London, where he worked to improve back-office and technology operations at global banks and leading technology outsourcing providers. In California, David was the Director of Development at a software consultancy that successfully launched ProjectInsight, a leading web-based project management tool. He was also responsible for the launching of web applications for startups in the financial services, entertainment, health care, medical devices, and technology industries. He holds an MBA from Columbia University in New York with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship and Operations. Additionally, he holds a BSc in Computer Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Southern California where he was a National Science Foundation researcher in haptic technology.

  • Andy McLoughlin

    Andy McLoughlin

    Director, Huddle

    Andy McLoughlin

    Co-founder and Product Director, Huddle - London, UK
    Andy McLoughlin

    Defying his mother’s advice that ‘the internet will never take off’, Andy. began tinkering with the web in the mid-nineties before starting his career at Fibernet Group plc as the company’s European webmaster in 2001. In 2003 Andy helped found KnowledgeCenter, a knowledge management consultancy focused on the London insurance market. During his time at the company he provided web content and knowledge management consultancy to a number of prominent global clients including QBE, Benfield, Catlin, Arthur J Gallagher and Montpelier Re. With more than 10 years of industry experience, Andy is an expert in field of online collaboration and is heavily involved in the London start-up community. Andy holds a degree in Economics from the University of Sheffield, but has always regretted not studying something more practical like Computer Science. In his spare time he enjoys fencing and skiing (both rather badly) but excels at sitting in sunny beer gardens discussing films, music and cool stuff he recently saw online.

  • Ioannis Methodios

    Ioannis Methodios

    ex-CEO, Accenture Greece

    Ioannis Methodios

    ex-CEO, Accenture Greece - Athens, Greece
    Ioannis Methodios

    Dr Ioannis Methodios served as the President and Managing Director of Accenture S.A/Greece. until 2005. Prior to this position he was the Managing Partner of the Consulting Department of Arthur Young/Ernst & Young/Greece, and a Management Associate in Booz, Allen & Hamilton/USA. Now, he operates as an independent management consultant, participates in real estate investments, and serves on the Board of a number of companies in Greece.

  • Nikos Moraitakis

    Nikos Moraitakis

    Head of Strategy, Upstream Systems

    Nikos Moraitakis

    Head of Strategy, Upstream Systems - Athens, Greece
    Nikos Moraitakis

    Nikos Moraitakis is the Head of Strategy and Product Development at Upstream Systems. He had prior experience at Ernst & Young Athens, as a Senior Consultant in IT strategy and e-business. Nikos holds a BEng in Computing from Imperial College, London.

  • Stefanos Vasdekis

    Stefanos Vasdekis

    Serial Web Entrepreneur

    Stefanos Vasdekis

    Serial Web Entrepreneur - Athens, Greece
    Stefanos Vasdekis

    Stefanos Vasdekis received his diploma in Civil Engineering from National Technical University of Athens in 2003. In his first year as a student back in 1997, he co-founded with John Nousis his first business, a free web hosting company that was paying back its members. This project targeted the USA market and was sold in 1999. Since then, he has co-founded (always together with his soulmate John Nousis) several other web businesses in the fields of ecommerce, web publishing, software development, internet consulting, online travel reservations and social networking. Most have failed, while some are still running and three out of them already had a successful exit. Today, he focuses on small projects that target selected niches in a few European, Asian and American markets.

  • Ioannis Vasilaras

    Ioannis Vasilaras

    Ex-CEO, Infote

    Ioannis Vasilaras

    Ex-CEO, Infote - Athens, Greece
    Ioannis Vasilaras

    Dr Yiannis Vasilaras has a long career in the telecommunications industry. He was the Managing Director of INFOTE (yellow pages), subsidiary of OTE, until 2008. Prior to this position he served as Director General and as Director in various OTE operating units, and earlier as Telecommunications Engineer. He also taught courses related to electronics and physics in the University of Athens.

  • Marco Veremis

    Marco Veremis

    Chairman, Upstream Systems

    Marco Veremis

    Chairman, Upstream Systems - Athens, Greece
    Marco Veremis

    Marco Veremis is the Commercial Director and Chairman of the Board at Upstream Systems. He has prior experience at McCann Ericsson, London, UK, as well as at Grey Advertising, London, UK and DDB London, where he served as account manager and account planner. Marco holds a B.A. in Economics from Warwick University, and M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University, UK.

  • Andreas Veneris

    Andreas Veneris

    founder, Vennsa technologies

    Andreas Veneris

    founder, Vennsa technologies
    Andreas Veneris

    Andreas Veneris is the President/CEO of Vennsa Technologies, a company that develops automated solutions to chip debugging and verification. He has 15 years of R&D experience in CAD software for chip debugging, verification, synthesis and test with more than 80 publications and five patents in that field. In addition to these credentials, he was an early member at OnRamp Inc., a pioneering internet multimedia company that went public in 1997. While at OnRamp, he was a member of the team that performed the first webcast ever (37th Annual Grammy Awards, 1995), an event acknowledged by members of the American Congress. He also worked in the early development stages of Mosaic (later Netscape) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Illinois). His operating experience is complemented by extensive experience in team building and technology transfer. As an associate professor at the University of Toronto and the Athens University of Economics and Business, he managed a large group of R&D activities and delivered them to the industry with specialized in-house tools. His multi-million R&D proect raising effort has attracted funds from premier semiconductor companies in the Americas, Asia and Europe. Prior to that, he was a visiting faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where he also obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 in Computer Science. He holds an M.Sc. degree from the University of Southern California (1992) and a Bachelor degree from the University of Patras (1991). He is a senior member of IEEE, ACM, AAAS, Technical Chamber of Greece, Professional Engineers of Ontario and The Planetary Society and he has co-authored two books.

  • Sokratis Papafloratos

    Sokratis Papafloratos

    co founder, Trusted Places

    Sokratis Papafloratos

    co founder, Trusted Places
    Sokratis Papafloratos

    Sokratis Papafloratos, 31, is the CEO and co-founder of TrustedPlaces, which he launched with Walid Al Saqqaf in September 2006, before raising a total of ₤1M in equity funding and leading the company to becoming one of the leading local review community sites in the UK. Prior to TrustedPlaces Sokratis headed up Operations for WideRay/Qwikker Europe, an American, mobile, technology start-up, funded by Sequoia Capital and Enterprise Partners Venture Capital. Before joining WideRay he spent four years in Vodafone in a variety of senior Strategy and Technology roles. Sokratis is originally from Thessaloniki Greece, where he grew up before moving to the UK to gain a MEng Electronic Engineering at the University of York.

  • Paschalis Bouchoris

    Paschalis Bouchoris

    Investment Director, NBGi

    Paschalis Bouchoris

    Investment Director, NBGi Private Equity – Athens, Greece
    Paschalis Bouchoris

    Paschalis is an Investment Director at NBGI Private Equity since 2006. He focuses on mid-market buyout investments across industry sectors in Southeastern Europe.
    He joined NBGI following a 12-year career as an executive and a strategy consultant in the US and Greece. He was an Executive Director at Intracom, a Greek technology group, heading its €200m /1,200-staff Services & Operations division in charge of IT & telecom operations. While at Intracom, he was also active in acquisitions of telecom operators. He had previously worked in New York as a Manager at the Monitor Company, a global strategy consultancy and was also involved in the inception and development of Drexel eLearning, a successful US online education firm, where he was in charge of marketing and strategic planning.
    Paschalis studied Electrical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens and has completed a MBA at the RSM/Erasmus Graduate School of Business in the Netherlands and several executive training programs in Corporate Finance in the US.

Financing Back to top

  • Spyros Floratos

    Spyros Floratos

    Investment Officer, ASOFIN, Greece

    Spyros Floratos

    Investment officer, ASOFIN, Greece
    Spyros Floratos

    Spyros works as an Investment Officer at ASOFIN Management, an asset management company, where he focuses primarily on investment portfolio (listed equities, fixed income, commodities, private equity etc) and corporate financial management. Prior to ASOFIN, Spyros worked at EFG Eurobank Equities as an Equity Analyst. Spyros holds an MSc in Finance from the Manchester Business School and a BSc in Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business.

  • Thanos Triant

    Thanos Triant

    CEO, Woodside Financial Group, California, USA

    Thanos Triant

    CEO, Woodside Financial Group, California, USA
    Thanos Triant

    Thanos is a technologist with experience in product development and venture investing. He has advised early stage technology companies and enjoys mentoring entrepreneurial teams. After 20 years in building financial data products for Wall Street and managing IT in large corporations, he has worked as a VC in Silicon Valley and now as an active angel investor. Over the years he has led software teams, built sophisticated, real-time financial data products, managed large IT infrastructures, corporate strategy and M&A. Before starting The Woodside Financial Group, he was an executive at Data Resources, Standard & Poors, McGraw-Hill, Times Mirror, Sun Microsystems and founder/partner at AltoTech Ventures. His investments during the last 14 years in early stage companies include: Siebel Systems, Postini, Securify, ClearStation, Rightworks, Valicert, Sendmail, Xactly, BrightEdge, Symplified, ConnectAndSell, ClairMail, Materna, Taulia and others. Thanos received BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University.

  • Mark Alex Dimitriou

    Mark Alex Dimitriou

    Senior Analyst, Marfin Investment Group – Athens, Greece

    Mark Alex Dimitriou

    Senior Analyst, Marfin Investment Group – Athens, Greece
    Mark Alex Dimitriou

    Alex is a Senior Analyst at Marfin Investment Group (MIG). His work covers financial & treasury management, analysis, planning, reporting and control of MIG’s investments mainly in the sector of Financial Services as well as at Group level. He has been engaging independently in advisory services (business planning & development, strategy and marketing) for fashion, luxury and e-business start-ups as well as guest-lecturing to finance postgraduates. Alex is a graduate of the University of Essex with a BSc in Mathematics with Economics and holds an MBA from Cardiff Business School. He is also an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

  • Francesco Benincasa

    Francesco Benincasa

    Director, Portfolio Capital

    Francesco Benincasa

    Francesco Benincasa, Investment Director, Portfolio Capital Europe - London, UK
    Francesco Benincasa

    Francesco Benincasa is the CEO of Portfolio Capital Europe, a specialist investment consultancy with a focus on the emerging markets and high growth businesses in Europe. He has set up funds and raised capital of in excess of €50m for emerging market funds since 2005. Francesco has been involved in internet businesses since 1995 and set up ihavemoved.com in the UK and Europe in 1999 where as CEO he raised over €10m through three rounds of funding. He is currently working with online startups in Asia and Europe.

  • Aristos Doxiadis

    Aristos Doxiadis

    Director, Notos Associates

    Aristos Doxiadis

    Managing Director, Notos Associates - Athens, Greece
    Aristos Doxiadis

    Aristos Doxiadis has been a private equity professional in Greece since 1995, most recently as Managing Director of Notos Associates (since 2000). He is also an angel investor in web startups. He has directed business consulting firms and has worked on anti-poverty programs for the European Commission. He has a B.A. (Soc. Stud.) from Harvard and an M.Sc. (Econ.) from London.

  • Niko Bonatsos

    Niko Bonatsos

    Associate, GC Seed

    Niko Bonatsos

    Associate, General Catalyst Seed, US
    Niko Bonatsos

    Niko Bonatsos is an Associate with GC Seed, the seed investment vehicle of General Catalyst Partners. He focuses on investments in consumer Internet, cloud computing and mobile with particular emphasis on seed stage investments and working with Entrepreneurs-In-Residence to launch new businesses.
    Niko has worked and studied in four countries. Prior to joining GC Seed, he was a founding team member of myLinkpower whose mission is to help professionals improve and get more value from their profile, connections and activity on LinkedIn. At Stanford Niko was a Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Electrical Engineering and provided consulting services for technology management related issues in cloud computing. Niko has also conducted research in biomedical signal processing as a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. Before, Niko worked as a technical consultant to U.K. companies on implementing lean manufacturing principles, an R&D engineer for Yokogawa Electric Corporation in Tokyo, as a recipient of the highly selective Vulcanus-in-Japan program and as a student consultant to Microsoft Hellas.
    Niko is a graduate of Stanford University, earning an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering as a Fulbright Scholar; the University of Cambridge, earning an M.Phil. in Manufacturing Engineering and Management; and the National Technical University of Athens, earning an engineer’s degree (Dipl.-Ing) in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

  • Evangelos Simoudis

    Evangelos Simoudis

    Director, Trident Capital

    Evangelos Simoudis

    Managing Director, Trident Capital - Palo Alto, CA, US
    Evangelos Simoudis

    Evangelos Simoudis joined Trident Capital in 2005 as a Venture Partner and has been a Managing Director since 2007. Evangelos focuses on investments in Internet and Enterprise Software businesses. Prior to Trident, Evangelos spent 5 years as a partner at Apax Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm where he invested and served on the boards of early and mid-stage IT companies. At Apax he also chaired the firm’s IT advisory board. Prior to entering venture capital, Evangelos had more than 20 years experience in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. His experience as a technology executive includes serving as President and CEO of Customer Analytics, a Trident-backed, eCRM company acquired by Xchange, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXAP), and as Vice President of Business Intelligence Solutions at IBM. Evangelos' current directorships include DesiHits, Hip Digital, Host Analytics and PivotLink Software. Prior directorships include Bristol Technology (acquired by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ)), Composite Software, Confluent Software (acquired by Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL)), Doppelganger (acquired by Hip Digital), Princeton Softech (acquired by IBM) and Vidavee (acquired by Vignette (NASDAQ: VIGN). Evangelos earned a PhD in computer science from Brandeis University and a BS in electrical engineering from Caltech.

  • Sotiris Siagas

    Sotiris Siagas

    Investment Director, i4G

    Sotiris Siagas

    Investment Director, i4G SA – Thessaloniki, Greece
    Sotiris Siagas

    Sotiris Siagas is the Investement Director of i4G SA, the management company of i4G Business Incubator with a focus on IT start-ups and member of the Euroconsultants Group. He has experience in business plan valuation, risk capital investements, financial analysis and business development. He has served on the boards of early IT companies. Sotiris is also the CFO and co-founder of Kapou Geoinformatics SA. He holds an MBA from Imperial College Business School (London) and a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Aristotle University (Thessaloniki). He is certified investment professional by the EVCA, member of the Technical Chamber of Greece and the IEEE and speaks 3 languages.

Legal & Accounting Back to top

  • Marina Comninos

    Marina Comninos

    co-Founder, ESS

    Marina Comninos

    co-Founder, Electronic Shipping Solutions - Athens, Greece
    Marina Comninos

    Marina started her legal career as a trainee solicitor with Clifford Chance in 1998. She qualified into the Maritime and International Trade Group in March 2000. Her areas of expertise include maritime dispute resolution (including charterparty, bills of lading and building contract disputes), commodities and international trade, mergers and acquisitions, advice on corporate structures and legal due diligence of companies, corporate governance, joint venture and shareholder agreements and cross-border acquisitions. She is currently General Counsel of Electronic Shipping Solutions, an eDocs Services provider which enables international trade participants to better manage and transact the documents required for operations, legal, compliance and customs purposes. She also advises Assos Capital Limited, an independent real estate private equity firm specializing in South-East Europe. She obtained a 2:1 in her bachelor degree in Government and Law from the London School of Economics and completed the Legal Practice Course with Distinction. In 1997, she obtained an LLM in Maritime Law from University College London with Distinction and was awarded the Derby/Bryce Prize in Law for obtaining the highest marks in the Faculty of Laws across the University of London. Marina is admitted to practice as a Solicitor in England and Wales and is a member of the Law Society of England and Wales.

  • Andreas Acavalos

    Andreas Acavalos

    ex-General Manager, PWC

    Andreas Acavalos

    ex-General Manager, Price Waterhouse Coopers Consulting - Athens, Greece
    Andreas Acavalos

    Andreas Acavalos is a Management Consultant, specializing in organizational strategy. He has served for over 20 years as a Partner of PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Greece and was Managing Director of PwC Consulting S.A., the firm’s consultancy arm, until its divestment in 2002. He now operates as an independent consultant and serves on the Board of a number of companies in Greece and Switzerland.

  • Vassilis Sotiropoulos

    Vassilis Sotiropoulos

    Lawyer

    Vassilis Sotiropoulos

    Lawyer
    Vassilis Sotiropoulos

    He was born in Athens in 1978. He graduated from the Department of Law of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens and holds a master degree in public law the Department of Law of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is a PhD Candidate in the field of constitutional law. He runs the blog elawyer.blogspot.com since 2005. He has established in March 2008 the office “Data&Protection-Legal services in the Information Society”. He also blogs at elawyer.blogspot.com .

  • Dimitris Christopoulos

    Dimitris Christopoulos

    Lawyer

    Dimitris Christopoulos

    Managing Partner, Christopoulos and Associates
    Dimitris Christopoulos

    Dimitri is the founding and managing partner of Christopoulos & Associates. He has extensive experience in the field of taxation law and acted as External Legal Counsel to the Ministry of Finance on Corporate Taxation issues from 1993-1995. Other appointments include membership of the Board of Directors of the Franchise Association of Greece in 1997 and legal counsel to a leading group of companies in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry. Dimitri is experienced in advising in all types of Real Estate and development projects, with a particular focus on the hotel, leisure, time-sharing and tourism industries. He also has established a specialisation in advising on the protection of Intellectual & Industrial Property rights, often working cross-border with correspondent law firms. In 1999, Dimitri acted in the first buyout of a domestic company by an international fund to take place in Greece, establishing his expertise in the area of Mergers & Aquisitions. He represents clients in Litigation & Dispute Resolution matters arising in all of the firm’s areas of practice, in particular tax and white collar crime, and advises local administrative bodies in respect of the liability of companies to tax. Dimitri has represented a number of clients in their bids in tenders for telecommunications licenses. Dimitri contributes regularly to the legal and financial press. He has been published widely in “Erga Omnes”, a legal publication of which he is on the Editorial Board, and the “Hotelier”, a leading publication in the tourism industry. Dimitri qualified to the Athens Bar in 1994. Having graduated from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 1990, he attended the Universite de Bordeaux, from which he obtained a DEA de Droit Public & Fiscal in 1992 and 1993 respectively.

  • Nayia Antoniou

    Nayia Antoniou

    Lawyer

    Nayia Antoniou

    Associate, Christopoulos and Associates
    Nayia Antoniou

    Nayia is an associate with the firm which she joined in 2008 as a trainee. Her practice is focused on Company & Commercial matters, advising on company establishment, corporate governance and the entry into all type of commercial contracts, including agency and distribution agreements. She advises in particular on the legal framework within which Cypriot companies operate in Greece. Nayia also represents clients in the registration of trademarks and competition law matters. Nayia qualified to the Athens Bar in 2009. She obtained her law degree from the Democritus University of Thrace in 2006 and an LLM in International Commercial Law from Westminster University, London in 2007.

Marketing Back to top

  • Nicos Anagnostou

    Nicos Anagnostou

    Entrepreneur, Blogger

    Nicos Anagnostou

    Entrepreneur, Blogger - Athens, Greece
    Nicos Anagnostou

    Nikos Anagnostou is the co-owner at Scicada, a new media consulting firm. He has also served as the COO of Project Online, a project management ASP and design software wholesaler and as the Applications Manager and Finance Director at Oracle Greece for approximately 10 years. His pet project is prosfor.es, a shopping deals aggregator. Moreover, Nikos is a founding member of the Greek Open Coffee and co-creator of Greekstartups.com. He blogs at metablogging.gr, webtropic.cc about Social Media, technology, web applications and startups.

  • Andrew Hyde

    Andrew Hyde

    Community Director, Techstars

    Andrew Hyde

    Community Director, Techstars - Boulder, CO, US
    Andrew Hyde

    Andrew Hyde is a designer, community organizer and a coffee evangelist, recently working with Techstars as the Community Director. Among a number of start-ups, he has also founded Startup Weekend, focusing on community building and providing an encouraging introduction to entrepreneurship. Previously he has worked on Interaction Design projects for leading ad agencies, non profits, and political campaigns. Andrew enjoys riding his bike year round in the great town of Boulder, Colorado.

  • Alex Kombogiannis

    Alex Kombogiannis

    CEO, EventNow

    Alex Kombogiannis

    CEO and founding partner of EventNow - New York City, NY, US
    Alex Kombogiannis

    Alex Kombogiannis Having produced and developed successful online interactive companies for over 12 years now, Alex Kombos represents a new breed of web entrepreneurs who is helping to mainstream the interactive realm. Working with tier one top agencies, brands and high profile corporate groups, Alex has a keen ability to start up innovative services within specific industries that help users, consumers and clients establish new standards when it comes to internet services and applications. As of 2010 Alex is focused on his 4th startup which is EventNow.com. a new services which will revolutionize how people search and book local service providers for events and parties. It will be serving an industry that grosses more than 120 billion a year.

  • Arda Kutsal

    Arda Kutsal

    General Manager, Crenvo

    Arda Kutsal

    General Manager, Crenvo Consultancy - Founder/Editor, Webrazzi.com - Istanbul, Turkey
    Arda Kutsal

    Arda Kutsal is an entrepreneur, business adviser and blogger living in Istanbul, Turkey. He is the author of the most popular Turkish Web 2.0 blog, Webrazzi and also General Manager of Crenvo Consultancy. Crenvo provides consultancy services to mostly internet companies about marketing, strategic management, investments, research and product management. He is one of the most influential people in Turkish internet market.

  • Boris van Zanten

    Boris van Zanten

    Serial web entrepreneur

    Boris van Zanten

    Serial web entrepreneur - Amsterdam, Netherlands
    Boris van Zanten

    Boris is a serial web entrepreneur. He started his first company, V3 Redirect Services, in 1997 and sold it in 1999 to Fortunecity.com which was about to go public on the Neuer Markt. In 2003, he started a Wi-Fi Hotspot operator in the Netherlands, HubHop, which finally sold-out to a big operator. Since then, Boris has started several projects and companies including The Next Web Conference and Fleck.com. More recently he started TwitterCounter.com. You could describe it as a combination of Feedburner and of Google Analytics for Twitter. He also served as the chairman of IPAN (Interactive Professionals Association Netherlands) from May 2005 till April 2008.

  • Leda Karabela

    Leda Karabela

    Executive & Leadership coach, Athens, Greece

    Leda Karabela

    Executive & Leadership coach, Athens, Greece
    Leda Karabela

    Spanning 25 years of experience in international management, public affairs, strategic marketing and corporate philanthropy, Leda Karabela's career focus has been building alliances with and among institutional stakeholders. Primary focus has been external audiences, such as opinion leaders, media, customers, and donors. Today, she is bringing her executive experience into the field of coaching, helping clients improve their performance, effectiveness and reach. Having held responsibilities for global projects and working with virtual teams in multiple countries for Fortune 50 companies such as BP and Microsoft, she has also led the corporate relations program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business raising over fifty million dollars during a major capital campaign. She holds an LL.B from Aristotelian University Law School in Greece, an M.S. from Boston University Law School and a Graduate Certificate in Executive and Professional Coaching from University of Texas, School of Management in Dallas. She has lived in Boston, San Francisco, London, Athens and Dubai.

  • Panos Samprakos

    Panos Samprakos

    Director, OgilvyOne

    Panos Samprakos

    Executive Creative Director, OgilvyOne Worldwide, Greece
    Panos Samprakos

    Panos has been working in the space of online advertising and Interactive Marketing for more than a decade, trying to bring in touch brands and online users, in way that is both direct and efficient for both parties. Since 2005, he has been directing the interactive unit of OgilvyOne Worldwide Athens, from the position of "Executive Creative Director", guiding creatively the creation of websites and online campaigns. The works that he has directed have repeatedly been awarded in Greece with Grand Ermis awards and have earned international acclaim at the NY Festival and MIXX Awards. Panos blogs at www.panos.gr, while he has founded one of the most historic James Bond fan sites, the "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang!".

The categorization of the individuals listed above is indicative of their primary aspects in their current main function, and by no means constrains the contribution of each one of them.